Archive for the ‘UNDP’ Category

DPRK seeks foreign capital through Rajin Port Development

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No.10-03-11-1
3/11/2010

North Korea is actively looking into further development of Rajin Port by extending China’s lease on port facilities for another decade, and granting Russia 50-year rights to Rajin port facilities, as well. Li Longxi, a deputy of the National People’s Congress and head of Jilin Province’s Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, revealed to a Yonhap News reporter in Beijing on March 8, “The North gave Russia the right to use Pier 3 for 50 years, and is actively looking into extending the right to use Pier 1 granted to China in 2008 for another 10 years.”

Rajin Port has five piers, with Pier 3 being larger than Pier 1. The rights to Pier 1 were granted to the Changli Group, which specializes in the manufacture of environmental materials in Dalian. 10-year use and development rights had already been granted to this company. Deputy Li explained, “China gained rights to Pier 1 in 2008, and is now in negotiations with North Korea over extending those rights for 10 years.” Therefore, if this agreement is reached, China will have exclusive rights to the pier until 2028.

Li added, “Currently, China is in the process of constructing the facilities necessary to use the pier, and will begin to move goods through the port when construction is complete.” It appears China has invested tens of millions of Yuan into this project. Li also pointed out that by being able to use Rajin Port, Yanbian, currently lacking export avenues, will be able to transport Jilin Province’s abundant coal resources, not only through the Yellow Sea to Shanghai and other domestic cities, but to Japan and other countries in the Asia Pacific region.

On February 28, Sun Zhengcai, CCP Secretary of Jilin Province met with North Korean Kim Yong Il, head of the Korean Workers’ Party International Department, and introduced to him China’s ‘Greater Tumen Initiative’ development project. At the time, it was reported that Sun explained to Kim that Jilin provincial authorities had reached an agreement with North Korea for joint venture to construct a network of roads and basic infrastructure facilities. Jilin provincial and city officials, as well as Changchun city representatives, are involved in the project. China is focused on the Tumen river basin and Rajin Port because of their strategically valuable economic role in developing the country’s straggling northeast region.

Russia is also eyeing Rajin Port, because if the port is developed, it could serve as an outlet to export Sakhalin and Siberian crude oil and natural gas to neighboring countries. In July of last year, Russia and North Korea reached an agreement to repair the rail connection between Rajin and Hasan and to improve Rajin Port facilities, investing 1.4 billion Euros. Japanese newspaper Sankei Sinbun quoted a source within North Korea as reporting that Jang Song Thaek, Party administrative chief and brother-in-law of Kim Jong Il, had recently travelled to Rasun (Rajin + Sunbong) and declared that the area would be fully developed within the next 6 months.

The Korea Daepung International Group, serving as North Korea’s window to foreign capital, is said to have a plan to entice international investment in order to support the Tumen river development plan, and plans to develop Rasun Special City and Chongjin Port into key outlets for DPRK-PRC-Russian trade and commerce in Northeast Asia. However, the participation, and investment, of private-sector enterprises will likely depend on the success of the Rajin Port development.

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Primer on the Tumen Area Development Project

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Northeast Asia Matters posted a very helpful background paper on the Tumen Area Economic Development Project. According to Northeast Asia Matters:

Many in Northeast Asia wish to see the Tumen Basin develop into a place for economic cooperation and competition. One such plan is the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI), formerly known as Tumen River Area Development Project (TRADP), being carried out under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The 20-year 80 billion USD plan calls for the creation of port facilities and transportation infrastructure in the region to support a multinational trading hub. Countries participating in the GTI are China, Mongolia, North Korea, Russia and South Korea.

The goal of GTI is to make the area into a free economic zone for trade to prosper and attract investment into the area. For China, the project would give traders in Northeast China easier access to major international ports without having to circumnavigate the Korean Peninsula and thus stimulating growth in China’s northeast rustbelt. For Russia, the project would give the ability to better exploit resources in Siberia and allow easier access to North Korea’s resource-rich hinterland; the area just to the south of the Tumen contains reserves of oil, minerals, coal, timber, and abundant farmland.

Development of the Tumen River area and North Korea’s participation in this project means inflow of hard foreign currency, improvements in infrastructure, and possible increase in industrial capacity. North Korea, with its bleak economy, therefore, will most likely continue to support the development of Tumen River area and increase its future involvement in the project as it seeks to break the economic isolation and hardship it has suffered since the collapse of most of its communist allies and the implementation of international sanctions.

Read the full paper here.

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UNDP to resume DPRK operations in February 2010

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

According to Yonhap:

The U.N. development agency plans to restart its operations in North Korea in February after a two-year hiatus, a U.S. radio station reported Saturday.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman at the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), told Voice of America that the remodeling of its Pyongyang office was completed in September and works are underway to install furniture and other equipment as well as to connect the Internet.

The office will become “fully operational” by the end of February, he said.

Currently, Jerome Sauvage, head of the UNDP’s Pyongyang office, and two other foreign staffers stay there, with two others due to arrive in Pyongyang in February, according to the spokesman. The UNDP has already recruited 13 North Korean employees, he added.

The UNDP launched development projects in the North in 1981 — including agricultural development, human resource development and economic reform programs. But it withdrew from Pyongyang in early 2007 after suspicions arose over the reclusive communist regime’s misappropriation of development funds.

On her visit to Seoul last month, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said that her agency will reopen the office “with a small program — around $2.5 million a year and a very small number of employees.”

The UNDP, meanwhile, shut down its office in Seoul earlier this month as South Korea has transformed itself from a recipient of international assistance to donor.

Read the full article here:
UNDP to resume operations in N. Korea in February
Yonhap
12/26/2009

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China approves Tumen border development zone

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

UPDATE:  China plans development zone on North Korean border
By Michael Rank

China is planning a major new development zone along the North Korean border aimed at boosting trade with its reclusive neighbour and throughout northeast Asia, a Chinese-language website reports.

The plan is to come to fruition under two separate deals: the border cities of Dandong in Liaoning province and Tonghua in Jilin province have signed an (unpriced) “development and opening up vanguard zone cooperation agreement” as well as a 440 million yuan ($64 million) “six-party cooperation agreement” with the Shenyang Railway Bureau, Changchun Customs, Dandong Port Group and Tonghua Steel (Tonggang) to build a “Tonghua inland port” with a duty-free zone, warehouses and international transit facilities that will be ready in 2012.

The Tonghua-Dandong Economic Zone will apparently stretch over most of the western half of the Chinese-North Korean border, a distance of around 350 km. The city of Tonghua is in fact some 80 km north of the border, but the report says the new zone will include the border post of Ji’an which is administered by Tonghua.

It gives few further details, but notes that when Premier Wen Jiabao visited North Korea last month he signed an agreement on building a new bridge across the Yalu river which would further boost Chinese-North Korean trade.

It also quotes the acting mayor of Tonghua, Tian Yulin, as saying that the new zone will transform the city from “inland” to “coastal” and “will promote trade between the inland cities of the northeast and North Korea and with the whole of northeast Asia.” The report adds that almost 60% of China’s trade with North Korea passes through Dandong.

This is not the only new development zone in China’s rustbelt northeast, which has been in severe economic decline in recent decades: a separate Chinese report announces the creation of another zone in Jilin, stretching from the capital Changchun in the centre of the province to the city of Jilin (or rather just part of it, for some unstated reason) as far as Yanbian on the North Korean border. This report does not mention North Korea directly but says the new zone will make the eastern border city of Hunchun an “open window” for regional trade, with Changchun and Jilin city “important supports.”

One-third of Jilin’s 26 million population live in the zone and it accounts for half of the province’s economic output, the report adds. See also this English-language report.

State-owned Tonghua Steel’s involvement in the Tonghua-Dandong zone is somewhat surprising as the ailing company has been rocked by unrest following an abortive attempt at a takeover deal by rival company Jianlong earlier this year. There was strong opposition to the deal on the part of workers who feared they would lose their jobs, and their fears turned to violence last July when a senior manager was murdered in mysterious circumstances.

The Chinese business magazine Caijing told how “the man’s death at the hands of unidentified killers uncovered an often antagonistic network of competing business interests and investors involved in Jianlong’s botched attempt to buy Tonggang.”

Tonghua Steel was in 2005 planning to sign a 7 billion yuan ($865 million), 50-year exploration rights deal with a North Korean iron ore mine, said to be the country’s largest iron deposit. The Chinese company was hoping to receive 10 million tonnes of iron ore a year from the Musan mine as part of its plans to increase steel production from a projected 5.5 million tonnes in 2007 to 10 million tonnes in 2010.

Tonggang boss An Fengcheng said at the time that agreement had already been reached with China Development Bank on 800 million yuan worth of soft loans and 1.6 billion yuan of hard loans, while “the remaining investment will come in in stages”. But it seems that the deal was never signed.

Caijing told how An, the steel mill’s chairman and Communist Party secretary, had “basically unlimited managerial control of Tonggang” and that the takeover by Jianlong was cancelled just a few hours after the murder of the manager Chen Guojin, who had come from Jianlong and was one of two Jianlong representatives on the board of Tonghua.

“There is no evidence to suggest An’s involvement in Chen’s death. But two weeks after the incident, he was sacked and stripped of all power by the Jilin provincial government. No other details of his removal were announced,” the magazine added.

ORIGINAL POST: According to the P.R. of China’s Global Times (Xinhua) via Adam Cathcart:

The Chinese government has approved a border development zone in the Tumen River Delta to boost cross-border cooperation in the Northeast Asian region, the provincial government of Jilin announced on Monday.The information office of the government said the pilot zone covering 73,000 square kilometers involved the cities of Changchun and Jilin as well as the Tumen River area.

Han Changbin, governor of Jilin, said the Changchun-Jilin-Tumen pilot zone was China’s first border development zone.

It is expected to push forward cross-border cooperation in the Tumen River Delta.

The delta, a 516-kilometer-long river straddling the borders of China, Russia and North Korea, was set up as an economic development zone in 1991 by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to promote trade.

In 1995, five countries – China, Russia, North Korea, South Korea and Mongolia – ratified the agreement on the Establishment of the Cooperation Commission for the Tumen River Economic Development Area (web page here). Japan participated in the program as an observer.

In 2005, the five signatories agreed to extend the agreement for another 10 years.

They also agreed to expand the area to the Greater Tumen Region and to further strengthen cooperation for economic growth and sustainable development for the peoples of Northeast Asia.

“Before the Changchun-Jilin-Tumen pilot zone was initiated, the Chinese part of the Tumen River area was mainly Huichun, a port city in Jilin, that has involved in the cross-border cooperation,” said Zhu Xianping, director of the Northeast Asia Research Institute of Jilin University in Changchun.

The 5,145-square-kilometer port city with a 250,000 population had limited industrial development capacity to develop infrastructure projects that will match the cross-border cooperation, he said.

Du Ying, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that by bringing the two cities of Changchun and Jilin into the border zone, the zone could serve as a strategic platform to support the cross-border cooperation in the Greater Tumen Region.

Zhao Zhenqi, an assistant to the Jilin governor, said the central government has allowed the pilot zone to try new land use and foreign financing methods, such as sharing ports and sea routes with other countries in the region and setting up free trade zones.

Under the initiative of the pilot zone, local governments in the region could better interact to tackle development bottlenecks, he said.

The Northeast China region, rich in natural resources including coal and oil, is China’s traditional heavy industry base and granary. However, it also faces the challenges of industrial upgrading, resource depletion and financing bottlenecks.

Random thoughts and links:
1. The challenge facing north east China (as they see it) is the lack of a port city on the East Sea (or the Sea of Japan if you prefer).  This is where North Korea comes in.  China and Russia have long been trying to establish  use rights and/or control of Rason and Chongjin.  Russia recently built a “Russia-gague” railroad line from Rason to the DPRK-Russian border. The Chinese have been busy building roads.

2. (speculation) China is the DPRK’s largest trading partner.  International sanctions have given China monopsony power vis-a-vis the DPRK.  This means the Yuan goes farther in the DPRK than in other countries and it gives the PRC a financial incentive in the continued economic isolation of the DPRK.

3. Here is CCTV video.

4. Forbes covers this story here.

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UNDP returns to DPRK

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

According to the Associated Press:

A U.N. development agency has resumed operations in North Korea after a more than two-year pause following allegations of fraud.

The North’s Korean Central News Agency said a ceremony Wednesday marked the return of U.N. Development Program to the country.

UNDP withdrew its operations in March 2007 following allegations that the agency had left itself open to exploitation by the communist regime for money laundering and other illicit purposes.

A U.N. audit cleared UNDP of wrongdoing in June last year, saying the agency knew of no improper financial dealings.

Yonhap news agency reported that UNDP decided to restart its North Korea projects after Pyongyang guaranteed independent auditing and administrative changes to ensure the transparent use of funds.

1. Previous UNDP posts here.

2. Previous DPRK aid posts here.

Read the full article here:
Scandal-hit UN program resumes aid in NKorea
Associated Press
9/30/2009

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Questions Are Raised About Who Profits from UN Aid to North Korea

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Fox News
George Russell
7/27/2009

Is North Korea’s dictatorial regime quietly profiting from U.N. emergency food supplies delivered to its starving people, even as the regime squeezes those deliveries down to a trickle?

Documents produced by the World Food Program, the U.N.’s flagship relief agency, outlining its current emergency operations in the insular communist state, raise a number of touchy questions about the financing and logistics of the effort, which was originally intended to feed some 6.2 million of North Korea’s most vulnerable people, but which is currently providing limited rations only to 1.33 million.

The $500 million program was meant to run from September, 1, 2008 to November 31, 2009, to deliver nearly 630,000 tons of food aid to North Korea at a time when it is suffering from severe flood damage and fertilizer shortages that have led to local food price increases.

Currently, WFP says that only $75.4 million worth of food aid has been delivered under the emergency program, as international donors have recoiled at the Kim Jong Il regime’s recent nuclear detonation and provocative missile launchings toward Japan and Hawaii.

WFP emergency relief program documents obtained by FOX News show that from the outset the food agency planned to pay extraordinarily high transportation costs for sending relief supplies to North Korea from around the world–about a dollar for every two dollar’s worth of food aid shipped into the country under the program.

Moreover, enormous sums were involved: $130,334,172 for “external transport” of 629,938 tons of grain and other food relief supplies for the overall program. (The food supplies themselves are projected to cost $297,396,729.)

For comparative purposes, the “external” shipping costs planned by WFP for the aid program average about $206.90 per metric ton of food aid .

Those rates were described as “absolutely ridiculous” by an expert on bulk shipping consulted by FOX News, even for sending goods by international shipping carriers to the remote region that includes North Korea. Another international grain expert consulted by FOX News described them as “way out of line” with past and present international shipping rates for bulk grain and other basic food commodities.

What WFP has not revealed in its documentation until questioned by FOX News, however, is that a substantial, but unspecified, amount of that money is intended to move the emergency aid from China to its final North Korean destination via shipping firms owned by the Kim Jong Il government.

Nowhere in the WFP program documents, which appeared on WFP’s public website only after Fox News began raising questions about them, is there any mention of the North Korean shipping involvement.

Even though WFP has not revealed how much of the $130-plus million in planned “external transport” money Kim Jong Il’s shipping firms are in line to receive, an analysis of the current costs involved in getting such supplies to their second-last destination reveal that the amount slated to pay for the last leg of the journey to North Korea could be huge.

A WFP spokesman blamed the overall high cost on “ the remote geographical location of [North Korea] from place of procurement (normally Black Seas, South Africa and South America).”

All WFP food aid, he added, was first shipped to the northern Chinese port of Dalian, before moving on to the North Korean port of Nampo.

But the spokesman then added that high costs were also due to “the lack of competition of transporters for transshipment” between Dalian and Nampo.

In fact, shipments to and from Dalian, China, one of the major centers of China’s huge export sector, are commonplace and hardly expensive by international standards. Data kept by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, for example, shows that grain shipments from Brazil to China between April and June of this year have varied from $32.50 to $42 per metric ton.

Moreover, those international shipping rates have been on a precipitous downward slide since June, 2008-three months before the WFP aid program began. Even allowing for higher rates from the Black Sea and South Africa, international shipping experts told FOX News that the rates would come nowhere near $206 per ton-especially as there is currently a surplus of international shipping capacity.

The same, however, apparently can’t be said of transport between Dalian and Nampo-a distance of 210 nautical miles.

There, the WFP spokesman said, WFP relies entirely on “feeder vessels belonging to the [North Korean] government.”

Asked late last week by FOX News to provide specifics of the rates charged by North Korean vessels for carrying international food aid home, the WFP spokesman did not provide an answer before this article was published.

However much the Kim Jong Il regime charges for bringing food to its people, it is not the only money that WFP provides to Kim for humanitarian assistance.

The WFP documents show that the government was to receive an additional projected $5,039,504 as a transport fuel subsidy if the relief program gets back into full swing. The “fuel reimbursement levy” amounts to $8 per ton of aid delivered, and according to the WFP spokesman, is normally not provided to countries that receive food aid-they are expected to chip in for this cost on their own–except under a waiver that North Korea has been granted.

So far, the Kim regime’s National Coordinating Committee, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has received $1.16 million under this waiver since September 2008, with the promise of an additional $361,400 to come. The WFP spokesman emphasized that the money was not paid in hard currency.

The same apparently applies to $4,409,566 intended by WFP to enhance a “capacity building strategy of government counterparts” envisaged in the relief plan. According to the WFP spokesman, this means management training and information systems upgrades for the Kim government to handle the new food aid. WFP is also paying for warehouses and equipment to handle the aid. So far, the regime has only $103,200 of the projected total, with another $155,000 committed.

Amid all the fuzzy math of the WFP relief program, there is a final quirk: the inexplicably high transportation costs work to the benefit not only of the Kim regime, but also to the benefit of WFP.

As a matter of standard practice, WFP charges a standard 7% management fee against “direct operational costs” of such relief efforts to support its worldwide operations, over and above the costs it incurs in the specific relief exercise. These, in WFP-speak, are known as the organization’s “indirect support costs.”

Based on direct operational costs in North Korea of $445,033,971-including the $133.3 million in “external transport” costs– WFP expected to reap $32,948,811 as its 7% share of “indirect support costs.”

Its 7% “indirect support” levy on the extraordinary $130.3 million transport bill would amount to about $9.1 million.

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North Korea restricts food aid (again)

Friday, July 10th, 2009

According to Fox News:

A spokesman for the World Food program has confirmed to FOX News that on July 3, the emergency relief organization was ordered to limit food deliveries to 57 of the 131 North Korean counties it previously served. At the same time, the agency was told that it must give seven days’ notice of visits to oversee food deliveries at all of its relief sites — a sharp change from the one-day notice previously required under a deal to retain U.S. support for North Korean relief efforts. As a result, the spokesman said, WFP is “reviewing the current terms and conditions for our work” in North Korea, “to ensure that our work and our accountability is not compromised.”

Additional constraints were also slapped on the child relief organization UNICEF in June, according to a spokesman, Chris de Bono. He told FOX News that the regime banned UNICEF from operating in its northerly Ryanggan province, which borders China, and is one of the impoverished country’s poorest areas. UNICEF still operates in 56 other counties across North Korea.

The restrictions make even more dire the food situation in a country where starvation and malnutrition are widespread, even as the Kim regime continues to set off atomic blasts and fire missiles in the direction of Japan and Hawaii.

Furthermore, they once again raise questions about the U.N.’s ability to monitor whatever relief activities that remain in the country. UNICEF’s spokesman told FOX News that only WFP had won the right to 24-hour notification for inspection visits, and that all other U.N. institutions in North Korea have operated with the one-week request limit as a matter of course.

UNICEF has ten international staff and 20 local staffers in North Korea. None of the international staff speak Korean. The agency is budgeted to spend $13 million a year on North Korean operations, principally on food for infants, children and pregnant women, along with emergency vaccination programs, essential medicines and clean water supplies.

But nowhere near that amount of money from international donors is currently available. According to its Web site, UNICEF has received only 10 percent of the total, or about $1.3 million, undoubtedly a result of the North Korean regime’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons. Unless more money is received soon, the UNICEF spokesman said, “it will be difficult to maintain the current level of operations and this will have serious negative consequences for children and other vulnerable people.”

The same funding shortfall applies to the World Food Program, which told FOX News a month ago that donor nations had provided only $75.4 million toward a 2009 goal of $503 million for North Korea, with more than half of that amount — $38.8 million — food aid that was not delivered in 2008.

The only other U.N. agency that has significant operations in North Korea, the United Nations Population Fund, reports that it has received no curtailment in its activities, but it only operates in 11 North Korean counties. It was slated to spend roughly $8.3 million in North Korea between 2007 and 2009, chiefly for birth control and other forms of “reproductive health” and for helping the regime collect population statistics.

Nonetheless, a big question mark still hangs over the North Korean operations of the United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s major anti-poverty agency, which suspended operations in North Korea in 2007 in the wake of revelations from an independent inquiry that it had wrongfully provided millions in hard currency to the North Korean regime, ignored U.N. Security Council sanctions in passing on dual-use equipment that could conceivably be used in the country’s nuclear program, and allowed North Korean government employees to fill key positions.

Read the full story below:
North Korea Cuts Off More U.N. Relief as Nation Starves
Fox News
George Russell
7/7/2009

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UNICEF maintains operations in DPRK

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Although the UN World Food Program was asked to leave the DPRK in March, along with US relief workers, the UN children’s fund (UNICEF) is still distributing relief supplies.  Additionally, the UNDP is about to resume activities.  According to Yonhap:

The U.N. children’s agency said Wednesday its humanitarian aid operations in North Korea remain steady amid diplomatic tensions, and that Pyongyang will soon sign an agreement to allow a nationwide nutritional survey.

“The situation with regard to access and monitoring is the same as it has been in the past,” Gopalan Balagopal, UNICEF representative in Pyongyang, said in an email interview.

“UNICEF undertakes regular field visits to monitor progress of work and holds periodic review meetings with counterparts,” he said.

As part of efforts to improve the health of North Korean children and mothers, the agency will soon sign an agreement with the North Korean government to conduct a nutritional survey across the country, set to start in October, Balagopal said.

“We are finalizing a memorandum of understanding with the government shortly for going ahead with a multiple indicator cluster survey, which will have a nutrition component,” he said.

Another aid agency, the U.N. Development Program, is also preparing to restart its program in North Korea after a two-year hiatus, he said. Four UNDP members came to Pyongyang on May 19, and two of them are staying there, keeping “busy with work for restarting their program,” Balagopal said.

UNDP withdrew from Pyongyang in early 2007 after suspicions arose over North Korea’s misappropriation of development funds.

June is a typically lean period in the North in terms of food security, and UNICEF sees increasing numbers of malnourished children in nurseries and hospitals, according to the official.

North Korea’s harvest this year is expected to fall 1.17 million tons short of food needed to feed its 24 million people, according to the Seoul government. Even if the North’s own imports and Chinese aid are counted in, the net shortage will likely surpass 500,000 tons, it said.

Balagopal said his agency has secured about half of its US$13 million target budget for operations in North Korea this year.

He noted there are “some indications” that access to the provinces in the northeast may be restricted to the U.N. agencies. He did not elaborate and said the U.N. will stop its assistance if the access is not guaranteed.

Read the full article here:
UNICEF aid flowing steady in N. Korea: Pyongyang chief
Yonhap
6/3/2009

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The DPRK food situation: Too early to break out the champagne

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland
Asia Pacific Bulletin
No. 27, February 5, 2009

Abstract
North Korea has suffered chronic hunger problems for two decades. A famine in the 1990s killed up to one million people and shortages have remained endemic. Most observers believe that the recent harvest is the best in years, but even under optimistic scenarios, food-related distress is likely to continue. Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland discuss North Korea’s current food situation and the prospects for the future.

Download the full paper in PDF here

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Korea Business Consultants Newsletter (1/09)

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Korea Business Consultants has published their January newsletter.

Here is a link to the PDF.

Topics covered:
New Year Joint Editorial
Year of DPRK-China friendship
UNDP to resume DPRK operations
Buddhist Leader to Head DPRK’s ROK Affairs
DPRK Railroad Engineers Study in Russia
Housing Construction Progresses Apace
Orascom Opens Bank in Pyongyang
DPRK Tackles Clothing Shortage
“DPRK Harvest Best in Years”
China to Invest in NK Coal
US$ 3.75 Million in Australian Aid for DPRK
The Principles of the DPRK’s Foreign Trade
ROK Farmers Send Rice to DPRK
New SNG Kaesong Plant Idle
“Inter-Korean Trade Slides Due to Weak ROK Won”
ROK to Build Nursery in Kaesong Complex
DPRK Opens Consulate in Dandong
DPRK, China Foreign Officials Meet
Seoul Forum Highlights DPRK Films
“NK Martial Arts Team Best in World”
PUST Opening Delayed
DPRK TV Takes Note of Park Ji-sung
The Korean War

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